Saturday, 20 November 2010

Zionist Infiltrators in the Green Party Sing the Same Song as Netanyahu and Lieberman

There was a time when Zionists claimed that theirs was a socialist movement and that the kibbutzim were examples of socialism in action. Today very few people believe these fairy tales. After all, no socialist institution bars the indigenous people from membership. Today Zionism is of an overwhelmingly and overtly reactionary nature.

There is however one way that you can tell that Zionists, whatever colour they come in – Green, Red, Black or Blue – are cut from the same cloth. With unerring consistency they all sing from the same songsheet. All of them, without exception, cling to the fading libel that anti-Zionism = anti-semitism. And if this is true of the ‘socialist’ Zionists of Poale Zion and Mapam, then it is equally true of the Zionist infiltrators in the Green Party, led by a Goldsmith academic, one Dr Mira Vogel.

Not that Mira is a particularly great academic. She boasts of having a Postgraduate Certificate in Learning and Teaching from Queen Mary College, University of London and a doctorate in 'Web-based health promotion for people with high blood pressure from City University, London.' The high-blood pressure bit I can understand, since her blog is quite likely to make even the calmest person go mad, but the rest seems gobbledydook.

Now I know that the involvement of private industry and moguls seeking a quick profit in the running of education has become all the rage among neo-liberals but I didn’t realise the dumbing down had gone so far. After all I have a PGCE but wouldn’t think to boast of it! And as for a doctorate in web based health promotion, well we may as well have a doctorate in the art of tying back your hair! Come to think of it we probably do! However enough about Dr Vogel’s academic pretensions. Clearly her doctorate is worth about as much as the Reverend Ian Paisley’s certificate from the US’s Bob Jones University.

What is getting Vogel and her fellow green imperialists worked up is the fact that I was invited as a speaker to their fringe meeting at the GP Conference two years ago by Green Left.

So troubled are they that they decide to put up a post that is half fiction and half madness (quite which half Mira belongs to I shall leave readers to decide). Mira complains that I ‘authoritatively reference’ my blog ‘to tell us that all orthodox rabbis are the same, and that we should listen to him because he considers himself a gold plated anti-racist.’

You can already tell by the sneering reference to ‘gold-plated’ anti-racists what the agenda is. Now I know of no one, not least myself who has been described as ‘gold-plated’. But what is equally clear is that Mira’s Green Engage cannot be described as anti-racist of any kind, be it gold-plated or copper bottomed. What is a fact that opposition to the rise of fascist groups in Britain has been the work of the Left not the Right nor Engage, still less the rest of the Zionist movement.

That is why it is not Mira Vogel who is the regular recipient of fascist death threats or targetted on neo-Nazi websites by Redwatch by anti-racists and anti-fascists, but people like myself.

So of course it is a lie, albeit one among many, to say that I ‘urge support for the EDL’. It is hardly likely that I would urge support for those who support Zionism on the one hand and who send death threats to me on the other! And of course it is absurd to say that I urge people ‘to vote yes to cooperating with the EDL’ as she and the increasingly idiotic Bob from Bromley of all places state.

What of course happened was that the Jewish Chronicle ran one of its pathetic polls, asking “Should a rabbi associate with the EDL?” And, albeit with a sense of mischieviousness, I urged a 'yes vote'.

It is of course a topical question. We have had all manner of Zionists, led by our good friend and co-Chairman of the Zionist Federation, Jonathan Hoffman, demonstrate alongside the EDL every 2 weeks. Both oppose the Boycott of Israel and the picket of Israel’s Ahava shop in Covent Garden. But then Mira Vogel and her Green Engage also oppose the Boycott. I don’t know whether Mira also graces Ahava with her academic pretensions but certainly her friends do.

We have even had Ruth Smeed, a spokesperson for the Board of Deputies of British Jews, a wholly Zionist outfit these days, explaining how ‘The BNP website is now one of the most Zionist on the web - it goes further than any of the mainstream parties in its support of Israel.’

In view of the closer and more overtly closer relations between the far-Right in Britain (and of course Europe) I naturally suggested that one obvious answer to the question of whether rabbis should associate with fascists is ‘yes’. And why not.

Now the question didn’t differentiate between Orthodox and Reform/Liberal/Progressive rabbis. It is true that politically there is a difference and that the latter are in general less bigotted than the former, even though they have along the way made enormous concessions to Zionism. Reform Judaism, the Judaism of the Jewish bourgeoisie, was resolutely anti-Zionist until the middle of the last century, because they had fought hard for Jewish Emancipation and Zionist claims that all Jews belong to the same nation/race echoed the themes of those who fought to deny Jews the vote.

I was of course referring to the bastion of racism, the justifiers of Jewish Nazism, the upholders of Jewish biological racism – the Rabbis of Orthodox Judaism today (with the exception of Neturei Karta, the tiny anti-Zionist Hasidic sect). I have never heard any genuinely anti-racist sentiments from this section of the Jewish population. This is the most overtly Zionist section of the Jewish community. They are to a man, because all of them are men, Zionists.

Their counterparts in Israel contain some of the most virulently racist ideologues alive. Not once have British Orthodox Rabbis distanced themselves from their Israeli counterparts, certainly not under the lacklustre present Chief Rabbi Jonathan Sacks. On the contrary many belong to sects associated with the most racist sections of Israel's orthodox community such as the National Union, Shas and Lubavitch.

We have the author of the King’s Torah, one Rabbi Yitzhak Shapira, being feted and treated as a martyr to free speech, because he was briefly arrested in Israel (not administratively detained indefinitely like Palestinians would be) for arguing that non-Jewish civilians ought to be butchered in cold blood. Shapira explained, Thomas Paine-like, that:

‘There is justification for killing babies if it is clear that they will grow up to harm us, and in such a situation they may be harmed deliberately, and not only during combat with adults.”

‘“Non-Jews are “uncompassionate by nature” and should be killed in order to “curb their evil inclinations.” “If we kill a gentile who has has violated one of the seven commandments… there is nothing wrong with the murder,”

And when his supporters, Rabbi Dov Lior of Kiryat Arba, a fervent believer that Jewish blood is more precious than non-Jewish blood, and Yaacov Yosef, son of former Chief Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, another noted racist, were summoned for interrogation by the Israeli police, they simply turned down the invitation!

As former MK Yossi Sarid commented in astonishment: ‘Something like this has never happened before, even though it seems as if everything possible has already happened - two rabbis being summoned to a police investigation, and announcing that they will not go. Even settlers are kind enough to turn up.’ Just imagine if Palestinians or Israeli Arabs were to refuse to turn up to an interrogation, were the Police kind enough to summon them rather than raid their house in the early morning, what the reaction would be.

Nor are these fringe rabbis or lunatic messianics. As former Sephardic Chief Rabbi of Israel, Mordechai Elihayu ruled: ‘It is forbidden to sell apartments in the land of Israel to gentiles, not a single apartment may be sold.’ [Ha’aretz, 17.1.86.]

Or take this example of rabbinical pearls of wisdom, also from an ex-Chief Rabbi (this time of Western Australia), one Rabbi Shalom Coleman who ‘blasted non-Jews, lesbians and homosexuals in his sermon.’ The venerable rabbi explained that ‘The goyim [non-Jews – TG] have no ethics, no morals, Jews have to show tolerance because goyim don’t’ before moving on to Jews who ‘marry-out’ i.e. marry for love rather than race. They were simply ‘the lowest of the low’.

But unlike sophists like Mira Vogel and her fellow ‘Green’ Zionists, who defend these people, the Jewish Congregation of Childwall, which I used to attend and which was Liverpool’s major synagogue 30 years ago, walked out! [Jewish Telegraph, Liverpool Edition, 1 August 2003]

So when I recommended voting yes, it wasn’t because I wanted anyone to support the EDL but because I support political honesty. I prefer racists who declare themselves as such to those who pretend that they are not racist. It makes sense that those who advocate the racist and murderous views cited above should associate with fellow racists. Why ever not?

And so taken in are some of Mira's fools that one of the posters to her blog, one Fr. Edwards (!) seriously asks ‘Do Greenstein and Fink realise who the EDL are cozying up to?’ Err no Father, do tell! Of course the obvious answer was: ‘Yes I certainly do. It happens every other Saturday when the Zionist Federation counter-demonstrators outside Ahava who support the selling of stolen produce from the West bank stand alongside the EDL!’

Mira, like many a pretentious semi-academic, complains that ‘Tony Greenstein authoritatively references his own blog to tell us that all orthodox rabbis are the same’. I’m not sure which is her major complaint but yes I source my own blog as a shorthand. But everything on my blog is sourced to reputable sources, often Zionist sources, such as the Israeli newspaper Ha'aretz or Yediot Aharanot.

As for all orthodox rabbis being the same, well I guess I’m in a position to know whether this is true. Being a son of one I can say authoritatively that I never heard any of them freely making any anti-racist comments and I was in a better position to know than Ms Vogel, since many of them visited and stayed with us.

It is not a mistake or accident that Mira Vogel and her fellow infiltrators pretend that I have every urged anyone to co-operate with the EDL. Having helped organise the recent demonstration against the English Nationalist Alliance in Brighton, I would hope that no one supported them. And I would hope that no one became a racist. But in a western capitalist society, whose wealth depends on imperialist and colonial relations with the third world, I am aware that this is but an aspiration.

Both the EDL and Vogel’s Green Zionists share the same perspective of the world and that is why we see these continuous get togethers between the Zionists and the EDL on demonstrations. Not once has Vogel and compatriots sought to criticise or distance themselves from Jonathan Hoffman and his merry band of Zionist and EDL demonstrators. We see it outside Ahava today and we saw it last June when both the Zionist Federation and the EDL demonstrated together in support of the murders on the Mavi Marmara of the Gaza Freedom Flotilla.

So a quick question to our ‘Green’ Zionists. Do they support the barbaric siege of Gaza, which ex-President Jimmy Carter has forthrightly condemned or do they support the murdering commandos of the Israeli navy? Or they still chasing any manifestation of support for the Palestinians inside the Green Party (i.e. anti-Zionism)?

10 comments:

Yes some sections of the Green Party do appear to be listening, or rather they are confused. That is the problem with a party without class politics which tries to be nice to everyone. The cry of 'anti-semitism' is likely to send them running scared without asking what this 'anti-semitism' actually consists of.

Tony, I'm afraid I have to disagree with you when you equate the Green Party's absence of class politics with an inability to understand the issues of anti Semitism and anti Zionism. This isn't about the absence of a class analysis so much as a limited analysis and understanding of international politics. The Green Party might get round to addressing this gap in understanding of the Israel/Palestine conflict, because what they have going for them is that a lot of those very nice people also have a well developed sense of right and wrong and know that the real issue in this dogfight is the Palestinian peoples struggle for justice against the inhumanities inflicted on them by the Israeli State and all those who support it. There are also many Jewish anti zionists in the Green Party who have been around the block a few times with the likes of the Green Engage and board of deputies types and they are providing Green Party members with a fast track education on the infiltrators and their tactics. All is not lost.

I'm one of those who've been helping other GP members to wisen up to Greens Engage and their tactics....Some members were already in the know, but it's those who aren't, who've been taken advantage of.

The party is probably the best one on Palestine, but it is not a priority for all members and not every member is going to be up on all the issues. At least now, members should know that Greens Engage are not the gate-keepers of what how anti-Semitism should be defined and that they need to listen to non Zionist Jews too.

When I joined the party early Feb., I was horrified to hear that Engage were causing trouble here too....And it was all very familiar: posting internal documents on their website, publicly attacking its leader and members and leaks to the media...(This is what Engage did to JfJfP).

I have been combatting and exposing them on internal lists and apparently before I came along, they had been bullying and silencing members with constant accusations of anti-Semitism. At one point, they were discussing (behind my back) taking action against me! More recently, Toby Green directly accused me of being anti-Semitic and questioned whether he should complain..I replied, 'Please do!' He didn't, but instead, he got Mira Vogel to post his diatribe to me on the Greens Engage blog, omitting my name. The fact that my name was omitted didn't make it any better, as he'd misrepresented my position and the email was out of context. Vogel refused to give me right of reply.

I think some of them are genuine Greens in other areas who feel uncomfortable with the boycott but Mira Vogel contributes nothing to the party. She doesn't go to meetings, participate in discussions,leaflet etc. Still, I should be thankful that she didn't come out of the woodwork to oppose my motion at the last London meeting, which was passed.

Just noticed that you had a post calling me "increasingly idiotic". That may be true, but much of the rest of the post isn't. Some of it would half make sense (in a twisted perverse way) if the JC had had a poll about whether Israeli haredi rabbis should co-operate with the EDL. Actually, it simply was about rabbis, and most JC readers would take that to mean British rabbis, which obviously would include anti-racists like Jonathan Wittenberg or David Goldman. I was at an event over Sukkah hosted by the East London Mosque (demon of Harry's Place) and found myself talking to a United Synagogue rabbi - not exactly someone who would want to join the EDL.

Even if we just focus on the Israeli ultra-Orthodox, though, groups like the Satmer Hasidim, for example, the Dushinsky Hasidim or the other Edah HaChareidis disprove your ridiculous claim.

Basically, you made a stupid joke, as all of us do, and instead of just backing down or letting it lie, you go to the trouble of researching one female blogger, claiming she is the leader of some secret Zionist plot, exhibiting her photo, ridiculing her personal life, telling more lies.

Tony, I know of your record as an anti-fascist (I was in AFA for 12 years) and I respect that, but it seems I am not the only one who has become increasingly idiotic.

I like the juxtaposition in Deborah's comment, btw, between having joined the party all of 9 months ago, and the accusation that a group of long-term party members active in their local branches are "fake" Greens.

Let's face the fact. You have travelled fast and far to the Right since your involvement with AFA. You supported, from what I can see on your blog, associate with the Euston set of middle class liberals like Nick Cohen, who became vehemently anti-Muslim and you have become little more than an errand boy for Zionism today.

And a Zionism which is shorn of any pretence of a left-wing, having to make do with one Mira Vogel as the best substitute.

There is nothing on your site which even begins to come to terms with the catastrophic ongoing situation of the Palestinians, where all options point to transfer and apartheid, as even some leaders of the British Jewish community are waking up to. Instead you choose to ignore that which I highlighted through, yes, a fairly tongue in cheek comment.

But though tongue-in-cheek, it had a serious purpose. You don't even begin to rise to the occasions.

Anti-semitism to all intents and purposes is dead in Western society. Its only remnants are alive and kept alive by associating Jewish communities with the barbarities that are perpetrated in Israeli society under the guise of fulfilling Zionism’s historic mission.

Where is the recognition of a situation where a minority is targetted for being a fifth column with loyalty oaths, bans on even mentioning the Nakbah and the vicious attacks on Haneen Zoabi MK, including the firing of rubber bullets by police at her whilst opposing the march of fascists through Umm el Fahm? Even your residual anti-fascist instincts should be alive to that one yet you remain silent. Not a word. And her crime? Being on board the Mavi Marmara on which 9 innocent activists were murdered in cold blood.

Instead we have this racist crap on your site:

‘The Law of Return’ is not a cut and dried issue, (it is not the only means of procuring citizenship and will no doubt be modified as situations change) and the notion of ‘jewishness’ or a ‘Jewish state’ is often not fully understood; there are many countries across the globe who employ similar rules, regulations, preferential treatment of entry, (inc. Germany, Serbia, Greece, Japan, Turkey, Italy, Spain, Chile, Poland, Finland et al), and ‘christian-ness, moslem-ness, hindu-ness’ in how a their country’s calendar is run – I might write about all this another day.http://greensengage.wordpress.com/

The Law of Return allows me to ‘return’ yet Palestinians away from Israel, let alone the West Bank, for over 2 years, do not have any such right. There is no right of the refugees who did live their to return. On what basis is this not racist? When Jewish immigrants (or white Europeans willing to be Jewish) can freely enter when former residents cannot, this is a justification of racism.

No one ever suggested the LoR was the only method of obtaining citizenship. And yes many countries give preference to former patrials or those who speak the language, like Germany, but none codify such divisions within their societies between e.g. ethnic Germans and others. All such states are states of their own citizens but Israel is not such a state. It is a state of the Jewish people, wherever they live because it is a Jewish state and likewise it is not a state of its non-Jewish citizens. A Jewish state is simply a state that gives preference to those of its citizens who are not Jewish – which to me is racism. That is why in most countries, nationality and citizenship are synonymous e.g. Britain. In Israel there are hundreds of ‘other’ nationalities as well as Jewish but there is no Israeli nationality (although the Hebrew Izrahut – Citizenship is lyingly described on the passport as nationality.

The idiot question that the Jewish Chronicle posed was “Should a rabbi associate with the EDL?” My own response is why not? Most rabbis are bigots and racists, although a few pretend otherwise. And what do I mean by rabbis? The same sense in which it is understood by most Jews. Maybe being brought up in an Orthodox household as the son of a rabbi has clouded by judgement, but the opinion of my father and ALL his fellows, and I met quite a few including Chief Rabbi Hertz, was that the Reform, including its rabbis, were worse than Christians. And I can remember my dad spitting on the ground whenever the name Jesus was mentioned! Yes that’s a few more secrets I’ve now revealed.

So no I don’t agree that the few temporising and anguished Reform/Liberal rabbis who are progressive were what either the JC or myself had in mind.

But the question was should rabbis associate with the EDL. What does it say on your blog? ‘Tony Greenstein … urged rabbis to support the English Defence League and suggested rigging a poll so that he could then falsely paint Jews as racists.’ http://greensengage.wordpress.com/2010/10/17/green-lefts-guest-urges-support-for-the-english-defence-league/

This is of course a wilful distortion and a lie. ‘Associate with’ is not the same as ‘urge’. That’s just a matter of language. I have never urged anyone to support a right-wing, let alone a fascist, organisation. But if there are a group of people who are undoubedly racist then why should they not associate with fellow racists? Does that mean urging support for the racists? Of course not.

Nor did I suggest ‘rigging’ a poll nor did I state that the reason for so doing was to paint all Jews as racist. Just how many lies do you feel is sufficient in one article? Of course Bob you didn’t write the article but it is still on your blog and you defend it. So yes, the term ‘"increasingly idiotic" was probably too benign, but I’m a charitable soul.

I have no doubt that there are a few among Israeli Haredi, not least Neturei Karta, who oppose the Yesha Council and the National Union rabbis and people like Dov Lior and Yaacov Yosef. And yes, isn’t it interesting that the former Sephardi Chief Rabbi Ovadia Yosef comes out with much the same genocidal comments as Yaacov Shapira of Torat Hamelech. There is no doubt whatsoever that the power in Israels rabbinate lies not with those you quote but with the aforementioned and the military rabbis and the Military Chief Rabbi Avichai Rontski. Those you mention may whisper in your ear but they won’t conduct any form of campaign against these people for the simple reason they would be slaughtered.

And it’s not difficult to understand. The whole rationale for Israel as a Jewish state was that there were historic religious ties between Palestine and Jewish people. Even the ‘leftist’ Zionists who proclaimed their atheism still justified colonising Palestine by virtue of the decision of a god whose existence they deny to give the Jewish people the Holy Land. The rabbinate have an absolutely pivotal position as the ideological justifiers and legitimisers of the most racist and chauvinistic aspects of Zionism and Israeli society. But whereas the chauvinism of the Talmud had increasingly become a dead letter in the diaspora, and of course the Reform had explicitly disowned it, when given state power and the chance to put their chauvinism into practice without the fear of being penalised, as in the diaspora, the rabbis grasped the opportunity with both hands. Hence the various yeshivas such Mercaz Harav which act as seedbeds for murderous madmen such as Baruch Goldstein.

But instead of even examining the links between these animals and the British rabbinate and how Lubavitch is allowed in this country, where it is also influential, to get away with the pretence of being opposed to racism whilst never questioned about its core philosophy and the activities of its rabbis in Israel, we get specious nonsense about ‘anti-semitism’ on your blog. Specious because it only ever relates to anti-Zionism and support for the Palestinians.

And the worst joke is that you have nothing to say about the fact that Zionists and the EDL stood side by side exchanging jokes as the ‘anti-semites’ held their protests outside Ahava. Presumably the EDL too are opposed to ‘anti-semitism’?